Minister of Works, Senator Dave Umahi has said that President Bola Tinubu did not recommend Hitech Construction Company Limited or any other company for the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway project.
Umahi made the explanation during an inspection tour of the project in Lagos, emphasising that “there is no corruption in it. It is very transparent”.
“Some people say that it didn’t go through competitive bidding.
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“I want to explain this: we have three types of procurement allowed by law,” he said.
The minister listed the three types as restrictive procurement, selective/competitive bidding, and open bidding.
“When we started this project, we asked for companies that have up to five wirtgne concrete pavers.
“You will agree with me that until we started this, the concrete paver was not as common in Nigeria as it is today.
“We had to look for a company that had done this kind of project before, and that is Hitech.”
Umahi noted that Hitech reconstructed the Oworonshoki Apapa Road.
“We saw that they got it right, so we called them on Section 1.
“Then, we used restrictive bidding, which we sent to BPP (Bureau for Public Procurement), and we sent to the Federal Executive Council, and they looked at it and corrected where they should and passed it accordingly.
“When other companies started bringing in some equipment because they saw that Ministry of Works is insisting, especially where we have a high water table, that we must use concrete, they started to bring in concrete equipment,” he said.
He said that the Federal Government consequently opened Section 2 of the project to selective bidding and selected some companies and they bid.
According to him, Hitech won the bidding.
He said that in Sections 3A and 3B, the same thing happened.
“We have not gone outside the law, we have not gone outside the Procurement Act.” (NAN)
